Workflow and Todoist

I recently ran into a strange issue when trying to automate Todoist task creation with Workflow. While very few people probably use Todoist the exact way I do, I thought I would share just in case it can help someone.

As a teacher, I only have a small time before/after school and during my planning period to complete it. If I set a due time for each of those task, it would generally be 4pm every day when I generally leave school. However, I check Todoist every day before I leave school. I don’t need a half dozen notifications going off at the same time. So for most tasks I set a due date with no time and work from Todoist’s today list.

The problem I ran into was with Workflow creating tasks in Todoist. Even when I would use a format date action and remove the time from the due date I selected, when the task went into Todoist, it would always have a time of midnight the task would show as past due. It’s a small thing, but it drove me crazy.

I reached out to Workflow, and they looked into it, and eventually told me they felt like the issue was on Todoist’s end (Todoist actions go through the Todoist API unlike many other iOS task management apps which use a URL scheme). I reached out to Todoist, and it seems the problem is indeed with their API.

Fortunately, they offered me a workaround until they could get the issue sorted. In Workflow, if you set the due time of your task as 23:59:59, Todoist will remove a time and leave just a due date. 🤷🏻‍♂️

In Todoist Email Task, if I need to remember to email someone later, this creates a task in Todoist with a URL that I can tap to launch Airmail and automatically fill in the subject of the email. This is handy if I need to remember to tell a student’s parent something that happened during a day, but can’t do it while I’m actively teaching.

In Airmail to Todoist, I use Airmail’s custom actions to make a link in Todoist to a specific email I may need to reference to complete a task or an email I absolutely cannot forget to respond to. I tap the link in Todoist, and immediately see that email again.

This week’s episode of Upgrade re-ignited my love of automation, and with school having just started, I’m starting to look for more things I can automate. I’m glad I found this workaround, so I can have Workflow add even more things to Todoist automatically for me.